Friday, February 25, 2011

20 Days of...Why You Decided to Start a Blog (Day 2)

The answer is fairly simple really: I love to yammer on about WoW related things. And I do mean yammer on.

You see, once upon a time that is now becoming further and further away by the day, I was a guild leader. As a guild leader I felt it my duty to often write lengthy, heart felt posts about guild ethic/etiquette, set up "how to" guides in different class forum threads just so our new folks would have some sort of resource at their fingertips at all hours, and in general have some sort of way to create a community for the guild that wasn't necessarily always in game. I felt very drawn to our forums and the interaction it brought. Unfortunately things happened, the guild died, and people moved on.

Being without a guild has left me with quite a bit more spare time. Originally I had this big idea that I'd eventually do machinima, and that in order to keep my massive throngs of fans updated on what my latest project was, I should have a blog. Nothing major, just something to jot down updates and occasionally maybe rant in. So I created a new Youtube page and this blog in preparation for that inevitable day when I'd be able to afford a computer that would allow me the luxury of frapsing content and editing it to my movie making desires.

...Yeah, nearing 6 months later and this blog has become a whole different monster. I'm getting ahead of myself in this story though.

So there I was, just toiling away, awaiting for my day of grand famedom to come. At this point in time I was more or less unaware of the greater blogging community, and had really only on occasion followed the Big Bear Butt blog simply because I had stumbled across him while I was on my epic quest of becoming a kick ass feral druid. He amuses me greatly with his epic stories, by the way. If you've never read him, you should.

One evening I was contemplating using my rather dusty blog to perhaps info dump what I knew about the classes I played (of which there was five at that time). I was discussing this to a friend of mine, and he more or less said "Why bother? There's already a site that does that." and linked me WoW Insider, which I of course by this time followed fairly religiously. Then a few minutes later the conversation evolved slightly, and he had mentioned how he had stumbled across a blog somewhere where the author had basically done up a story type thing as they leveled up their character. It sounded to me like it was a bit of a leveling RP blog. The idea hit me like a brick wall: I could do something like that! I've always wanted to get more into story writing, so why don't I level up a character, write the story as I level her up, and put it into a blog?

Well, I started up that project, and probably not a one of you remembers it. It was my Body and Soul project. I created a back story for Jenesee the Holy Priest, as well as for several characters that she was to come across. There was in existence a greater plot that she would fall into once I got her to cap. I had a few of the maps planned with allowance for detours along the way. I kind of ran into a few snags though: time, location, and motivation. Jenesee, her sister Gypsium (Gypsy), and Drazzu are all Horde...not to mention Horde on a different server than the one I typically haunt. This proves mildly problematic when it comes to gold and BoAs. Now, I do plan on resurrecting Jenesee and her story at some point, but she's definitely on the back burner for the time being.

In the mean time I began to post on this blog. Most of it was mount drop rate/RNG QQ at first, but some of it pertained to other things I was working on in game. I decided that I longed for a written record for the major events in my WoW life. I began to babble about working on the Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest line as well as recording some of the various other adventures my Priesty friend and I went on. You can be sure I'll be doing more of it once I get my butt back in game! I know you're all excited about it...

Anyways, I have another dear friend of mine who is a little baby Warlock. My dear little 'lock has been playing since Vanilla, but she's never been to cap. We often find ourselves in length WoW-related discussions. Often she begins to pick my brain about this or that, and quite often I find myself not able to explain things well enough on the fly. This has evolved into me saying: "Well, it's complicated. I have a ton of free time, so let me make you a guide for that!"

Of course, being out of the game for so long has left me only with the ability to create rather generalized guides, and which is why you won't be seeing a ton of them from me for a while yet. If you're curious about what I have done though, check out my Guide Book page. If you're looking for stuff that's a bit more class/specialization specific, scroll down the list. Any of those blog writers could easily put me out of business with their gearing/rotation/gemming/boss killing/PvP dancing guides. If I didn't think that they were worth their salt, they wouldn't be on my list.

So yes...blogging! It's something that I'm still incredibly new at and definitely something I'm learning more about every day. It was something that I just kind of haphazardly stumbled into (as how I often tend to do things), and it's definitely something that I'd like to continue on doing. It's already opened up a whole new community to me that I didn't know even existed, and I certainly hope to meet and get to know some pretty awesome folks along the way. I've already passed by a few thus far in my blogging journey, so here's to getting to know them and getting to meet a few more!

Hmm, perhaps I need to change my original answer to this topic a tad.

Why did you start a blog: Because I just happened to fall into it, liked what I saw, and hey, I like to create massive walls of text. It's a match made in heaven.

3 comments:

Massive walls of text are always good! I like to crit my friends with it on various chat programs after which they always seem to go afk.. hmm.. coincidence?

I always wanted to do WoW movies too, but I lack.. patience *lol* I especially wanted to make some WoW songs, but for that I lack the music (without people already singing) since I can't play myself.. and what's the other thing? Oh yeah.. I can't sing :P

I used to crit the guild forums all the time. I'm fairly certain that only 2-3 people ever read one of my full length, heart felt "now be nice to everyone" posts all the way through.

I honestly would love to get into doing story telling type movies, more than likely set to music since voice acting seems like it would be to huge of a huge headache to arrange. I'd also love to get into doing some WoW parodies, but I've been away from music for so long I sometimes doubt my ability to create/sing/arrange. Again, when I sit and think about it, it seems like making parodies may just turn out to be too big of a headache. Doesn't hurt to try and dabble though, right?